Native Chicagoan Novelist with International lifestyle, sounding off about various topics related to life, inspiration and random activities.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Biofeedback - A New Experience

I attended a BioFeedback session today. When I shared a brief version of the result to a great friend who is knowledgeable in physiology she responded as if was a "good" thing that I was in parasympathetic mode. That was not the way it was described to me by the doctor who had performed the BioFeedback analysis. While I was already planning to research it, this confused me.

This started because last year I experienced an infection of some sort in my colon/stomach area. It remains undiagnosed beyond a belief that I picked up a parasite during my time in Mexico and it resides in my ileo-cecal valve. I call it my stomach critter. I have been managing it with natural supplements. I thought I was better so I laid off the supplements. It seemed to be alright for weeks, but it is currently irritated again. I decided to try this biofeedback analysis since I saw a location where the analysis was free.

It was an interesting experience. She put a band on my head to measure brain waves and a fiber optic electrode which I was to hold in my thumb & forefinger tips. The point was to measure blood flow starting at the base of the brain moving through the various sections of the brain. Next would be organs.

My blood flow was so low throughout my brain that it did not measure, or meet the threshold. She could see it, but it was not strong enough to ring the bell, shall we say. (Needless to say, it is good she was not measuring my blood pressure because it must have skyrocketed.) The doctor said this indicated to her that my body was in repair mode as if I were sleeping, or parasympathetic mode.

The same was the case when it measured blood flow near my major organs. She could see the blood flow but it did not reach the threshold. She said it was suppressed by inflammation that was creating friction which will not allow blood to flow normally. This lowers oxygen to the body,

We covered my lack of sleeping recently, waking still feeling tired, low energy, more than 10 pound weight loss since July 26th or so and the various pains that pop up out of nowhere.

With that in mind, she believes the ileo cecal valve in my colon has a fungus rather than a parasite, virus or bacteria. She believes when I stop with the supplements which keep a flora balance in my colon and keeps down inflammation naturally, that the fungus grows and creates the inflammation.

This lead her to my ask about acidic levels and cancer in my family, which I have quite a bit of.

For now, she gave me (free) some acid strip tests to see what the levels are, some Kosher Baking Soda to try to calm the acid in my gut (which I do not feel), and said my supplements seem to help me, but the goal is to find the fungus and kill it.

The parasympathetic nervous system seems to be the healing one, rather than flight or fight (sympathetic), so I am not finding the correlation to what she described in my research. It makes sense in theory, but I am still looking for the scientific links, which I may have just come across, but I need to qualify it. This parasympathetic part of the nervous system and biofeedback seem to be psychological in nature that manifests physically but I could not manifest fungus in my gut from my brain.